Quotations

A to E

Edward Abbey

• Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.

Arthur R. Adams

• Don't stay away from church because there are so many hypocrites. There's always room for one more.

Douglas Adams

• Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for  their apparent disinclination to do so.

Scott Adams

• Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.

Alfred Adler

• A lie would have no sense unless the truth were felt as dangerous.
• It is easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.

Howard Aiken

• Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats.

Joe Ancis

• The only normal people are the ones you don't know very well.

Margaret Anderson

• I wasn't born to be a fighter. The causes I have fought for have invariably been causes that should have been gained by a delicate suggestion. Since they never were, I made myself into a fighter.

Anonymous

• A conclusion is simply the place where you got tired of thinking.
• A half truth is a whole lie. [Yiddish proverb]
• Always drink upstream from the herd. [Cowboy proverb]
• Any moron can
  Write haiku; just stop at the
  Seventeenth sylla.
• Beauty’s only skin deep but ugly goes clear to the bone.
• Be careful what you wish for—you might get it.
• If you're right 98% of the time, why quibble about the remaining 3%?
• If you want your dreams to come true, don't sleep. [Yiddish proverb]
• It is better to have a pebble for a God than to have no God. [Hindu proverb]
• Life's a bitch and then you die.
• Love your enemies, just in case your friends turn out to be a bunch of bastards.
• Never miss a good chance to shut up.
• Never get into a pissing contest with a skunk.
• No good deed goes unpunished.
• One man has ten years' experience, another has one year's experience ten times.
• Our main business is not to see what lies dimly at the distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand. But what God has put in our power is the happiness of those about us, and that is largely to be secured by our being kind to them.
• Politicians are like monkeys. The higher they climb, the more you can see their disgusting parts. [Welsh saying]
• Profanity is the crutch of the ineloquent motherfucker.
• Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur. [Whatever is said in Latin sounds profound.]
• Real love is permanent. [various attributions]
• Shit, fire and fools do not want to be touched. (Dutch proverb)
• The older a fool, the worse he is.
• The praise of fools is censure in disguise.
• Though malice may darken truth, it cannot put it out.
• When you were born, you cried and the world rejoiced. Live your life so that when you die, the world cries and you rejoice. [Indian saying].

Aristotle

• Humor is the only test of gravity, and gravity of humor; for a subject which will not bear raillery is suspicious, and a jest which will not bear serious examination is false wit.
• It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
• No great genius is without an admixture of madness.
• Wit is educated insolence.

Attaturk

• A man who doesn't think differently from his time and environment can't grow beyond his time and environment.

St. Augustine

• Complete abstinence is easier than perfect moderation.
• God judged it better to bring good out of evil than to suffer no evil at all.
• Habit, if not resisted, soon becomes necessity.

Francis Bacon

• A bad man is worse when he pretends to be a saint.
• A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds.
• Truth emerges more easily from error than from confusion.

W. Bagehot

• What we opprobriously call stupidity, though not an enlivening quality in common society, is nature’s favorite resource for preserving steadiness of conduct and consistency of opinion.

Roseanne Barr

• You’ve got to give a guy his dreams. Then he won’t notice that you control his reality.

Dave Barry

• When trouble arises and things look bad, there is always one individual who perceives a solution and is willing to take command. Very often, that individual is crazy.

Miles Barth

• Everyone is unique, but no one is special.

L. Frank Baum

• [U]nless one can think wisely it is better to remain a dummy. [in The Land of Oz]

Henry Ward Beecher

• Sorrow makes men sincere.

Saul Bellow

• A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep.

Carl Bereiter

• Intelligence is what you use when you don't know what to do.

Bernard Berenson

• Genius is the capacity for productive reaction against one's training.

Francis Bernadone (Saint Francis of Assisi)

• That for which you are looking is that which is looking.

Yogi Berra

• In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is.

Swami Beyondananda

• Life is like photography. You use the negative to develop.

Ambrose Bierce

• Being positive is being mistaken at the top of one's voice.
• Man is an animal so lost in rapturous contemplation of what he thinks he is as to overlook what he indubitably ought to be.

Josh Billings

• As scarce as truth is, the supply has always been in excess of the demand.
• The trouble with most folks isn't so much their ignorance. It's know'n so many things that ain't so.

Hugo Black

• Freedom to speak and write about public questions is as important to the life of our government as is the heart to the human body. In fact, this privilege is the heart of our government. If that heart be weakened, the result is debilitation; if it be stilled, the result is death.

William Blake

• It is easier to forgive an enemy than to forgive a friend.
• Who would do good to another must do so in minute particulars. [in Jerusalem]

Henry George Bohn

• He who knows himself best esteems himself least.

Nicolas Bolleau-Despréaux

• A fool always finds a greater fool to admire him.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

• The best-informed man is not necessarily the wisest. Indeed there is a danger that precisely in the multiplicity of his
  knowledge he will lose sight of what is essential. But on the other hand, knowledge of an apparently trivial detail
  quite often makes it possible to see into the depth of things. And so the wise man will seek to acquire the best
  possible knowledge about events, but always without becoming dependent upon this knowledge. To recognize the significant in the factual is wisdom.

Baron Bowen

• A metaphysician is a man who goes into a dark cellar at midnight without a light looking for a black cat that is not there.

Buddha

• Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it—even if I have said it—unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense.
• Do not close your eyes to suffering. Find ways to be with those who are suffering, including personal contacts and visits. By such means awaken yourself and others to the reality of suffering in the world.
• There is no way to happiness—happiness is the way.
• What we think, we become.

Edmund Burke

• The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.
• The people never give up their freedom except under some delusion.

Herb Caen

• A man begins cutting his wisdom teeth the first time he bites off more than he can chew.
• The trouble with born-again Christians is that they are an even bigger pain the second time around.

Calvin and Hobbes

• A little rudeness and disrespect can elevate a meaningless interaction to a battle of wits and add drama to an otherwise dull day!
• I imagine bugs and girls have a dim perception that Nature played a cruel trick on them, but they lack the intelligence to really comprehend its magnitude.
• People think it must be fun to be a supergenius, but they don't realize how hard it is to put up with all the idiots in the world.

Albert Camus

• An intellectual is a person whose mind watches itself.
• Too many have dispensed with generosity in order to practice charity.

Chateaubriand

• An original writer is not one who imitates nobody, but one whom nobody can imitate.
• One is not superior simply because one sees the world as odious.

G.K. Chesterton

• All men thirst to confess their crimes more than tired beasts thirst for water; but they naturally object to confessing them while other people, who have also committed the same crimes, sit by and laugh at them.
• At the back of our mind exists a forgotten blaze or burst of astonishment at our own existence.  The object of the artistic and spiritual life is to dig for this submerged sunrise of wonder.
• Men do not differ much about what things they will call evils; they differ enormously about what  evils they will call excusable.
• “The Christian ideal,” it is said, “has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult and left untried.” [in What’s Wrong with the World]

Winston Churchill

• A fanatic is someone who can't change his mind and won't change the subject.

Cicero

• There is nothing so absurd that it has not been said by philosophers.

Arthur C. Clarke

• A faith that cannot survive collision with the truth is not worth many regrets.
• Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

Terry Cohen

• He who laughs last is generally the last to get the joke.

Nick Coleman, age 9

• Don't think life is easy, because when you get older it is hard work. I used to think life was easy; now I have to do the dishes every other day.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

• Common sense to an uncommon degree is what the world calls wisdom.
• The man’s desire is for the woman; but the woman’s desire is rarely other than for the desire of the man.

Confucius

• A man who has committed a mistake and doesn't correct it is committing another mistake.

Cyril Connolly

• Everything is a dangerous drug except reality, which is unendurable.

James Fennimore Cooper

• They who have reasoned ignorantly, or who have aimed at effecting their personal ends by flattering the popular feeling, have boldly affirmed that "one man is as good as another," a maxim that is true in neither nature, revealed morals, nor political theory.

Quentin Crisp

• Never keep up with the Joneses. Drag them down to your level.

John Philpot Curran

• The condition upon which God has given liberty to man is eternal vigilance. [Speech upon the Right of Election, 1790.]

Salvador Dali

• The only difference between a madman and myself is that I am not mad.

Dante

• The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in a time of moral crisis, maintain their neutrality. [in The Inferno]

Charles de Gaulle

• Since a politician never believes what he says, he is surprised when others believe him.

Bertran de Jouvenal

• A society of sheep must in time beget a government of wolves.

François de la Rochefoucauld

• It is great cleverness to know how to conceal our cleverness.
• Other men are lenses through which we read our own minds.

Demosthenes

• A man is his own easiest dupe, for what he wishes to be true he generally believes to be true.
• There is one safeguard known generally to the wise, which is an advantage and security to all, but especially to democracies as against despots. What is it? Distrust.
• What we have in us of the image of God is the love of truth and justice.

Francis de Sales

• Half an hour's meditation is essential, except when you are very busy. Then a full hour is needed.

Rene Descartes

• If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things.

Dhammapada

• Travel only with your equals or your betters. If there are none, travel alone.

Isaac D'Israeli

• The wisdom of the wise, and the experience of ages, may be preserved by quotations

Kathleen Dixon, Director of Women's Studies, Bowling Green (Ohio) State University

• We forbid any course that says we restrict free speech!

Dostoevski

• Lying to ourselves is more deeply ingrained than lying to others.

William Drummond

• He who will not reason is a bigot, he who cannot is a fool, he who dares not is a slave.

David Dunham

• Efficiency is intelligent laziness.

Russ Dunham

• Sometimes you have to forget about principles and do the right thing.

Will Durant

• Education is the progressive discovery of our ignorance.

Bob Dylan

• To live outside the law you must be honest. [in “Where Are You Tonight, Sweet Marie?”]

Meister Eckhart

• Our bodily food is changed into us, but our spiritual food changes us into it.
• What is truth? Truth is something so noble hat if God could turn aside from it, I could keep to the truth and let God go.

Thomas Edison

• Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.

Albert Einstein

• Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.
• As soon as science has emerged from its initial stages, theoretical advances are no longer achieved merely by a process of arrangement. Guided by empirical data, the investigator rather develops a system of thought which, in general, is built up logically from a small number of fundamental assumptions, the so-called axioms. We call such a system of thought a theory. The theory finds the justification for its existence in the fact that it correlates a large number of single observations, and it is just here that the 'truth' of the theory lies.
• As the circle of light grows, so does the circumference of darkness around it.
• Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.
• Concepts that have proven useful in ordering things easily achieve such an authority over us that we forget their earthly origins and accept them as unalterable givens. Thus they come to be stamped as "necessities of thought," "a priori givens," etc. The path of scientific advance is often made impassable for a long time through such errors.
• Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environments.  Most people are incapable of even forming such opinions.
• Genius has its limits but stupidity is endless.
• Happiness, as a pursuit, is suitable only for pigs.
• I don't know with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.
• I want to make things as simple as possible, but no simpler.
• Most of the fundamental ideas of science are essentially simple, and may, as a rule, be expressed in a language comprehensible to everyone.
• Since the mathematicians have invaded the theory of relativity, I do not understand it myself any more.
• Technological progress is like an axe in the hands of a pathological criminal.
• The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental mental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science. Whoever does not know it and can no longer wonder, no longer marvel, is as good as dead, and his eyes are dimmed.
• The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.
• The stupid are invincible.
• The telegraph is a kind of very long cat. You pull his tail in New York and he is mewing in Los Angeles. Radio operates in exactly the same way, except there is no cat.
• The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them.
• The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking.
• What interests me most is whether God could have made the world differently.

T.S. Eliot

• Half of the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm but the harm does not interest them.

John Evanson

• To get new knowledge requires new questions.

Hans Eysenck

• It is generally agreed by philosophers of science that important contributions which have a revolutionary impact on science are often methodologically inadequate, reveal many anomalies, and may indeed be factually erroneous.
• Psychotherapy is the prostitution of friendship.

[Quotations F-J]  [Quotations K-R]  [Quotations S-Z]

[Miscellany]

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